This course will help prepare students for the rigorous research, analysis, entrepreneurship, and innovation required in international development and conflict management professions.
Terms Offered
Spring 2021
Spring 2022
Fall 2022
Spring 2023
Course Details
This course will help prepare students for the rigorous research, analysis, entrepreneurship, and innovation required in international development and conflict management professions. Learning of practical, applicable, translatable knowledge and skills will be accomplished through an intensive problem-based and design-oriented experience.
Number of credits: 3
How You Will Learn and Work
This is a Global Classrooms Connections Course. Spending the bulk of classroom hours “workshopping” in their project teams, students will conceive, develop, and articulate novel, viable solutions to key contemporary problems in international development and conflict management. A list of real, concrete problems will be seeded by a network of contacts in governmental and intergovernmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, and companies operating in these sectors. The key deliverable of each project team will be a professional brief that the students will present in a final symposium before an audience of development and conflict management policy makers and practitioners, including those who have seeded the problems. One or more discussants with relevant expertise will provide formal comments about the project presentations. By the end of the course, the students will have developed both hard skills and issue expertise. This is a partially flipped course, meaning that most content is delivered via readings, videos, online lectures, and other out-of-class assignments. Class time will function as a research and ideation “lab” where students spend most classroom time in lively discussion or in project teams or other small groups, practicing the hands-on skills. Activities will include structured “ideation fish-bowls” and unstructured brainstorming.
Cultural Connection
World-wide
General Education Credits
Distributive Studies-Scholarship in Practice
Diversity-Cultural Competency
School/College
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Prerequisites & Restrictions
GVPT354 is a prerequisite.
Students not in the Minor in International Development and Conflict Management will need to request special permission from the instructor to enroll.
Faculty Highlight
Dr. Stacy J. Kosko
Dr. Stacy J. Kosko is Associate Research Professor, and Associate Director of the Minor in International Development and Conflict Management (MIDCM), in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland (UMD). Her research focuses on development ethics, human rights, and marginalized populations. She spent the 2017-2018 academic year as a Fulbright Scholar in Moldova. Her book, Agency and Democracy in Development Ethics, was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press (with Lori Keleher, eds). She has been a Global Classroom Fellow and a Distinguished Fellow of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UMD. Outside of UMD, Dr. Kosko is an Officer and a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association and serves on the Executive Board of the International Development Ethics Association. She is also Vice Chair of the Board and Director of Research and Strategy at the Center for Values in International Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and development from the University of Maryland and an MS in Foreign Service and international conflict management from Georgetown University, with a Certificate in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies.
Tuition & Scholarship
Course costs should be calculated based on the university’s standard tuition and fees for undergraduate students and graduate students.
Students enrolled in winter and summer Global Classrooms courses may be eligible for the International Education Scholarship.
Cancellation and Refunds
Global Classrooms courses follow UMD's Schedule Adjustment policies.
Questions & Contact Info
For more course information contact Dr. Stacy J. Kosko at sjkosko@umd.edu.
For general questions, please contact the Global Classrooms team at globalclassrooms@umd.edu.